MBAU
by PaBurke
Summary: Spencer Reid lives in a world of mutants, where he and the rest of the BAU team still catch the worst of the worst.


MBAU

By PaBurke

Summary: Spencer Reid lives in a world of mutants, where he and the rest of the BAU team still catch the worst of the worst.

Rating: teen

Spoliers: General X-men common knowledge and Season 5 of Criminal Minds. Fusion of the two.

~cm~x-men~cm~x-men~

I watched Emily Prentiss and Derrik Morgan walk into the MBAU. The empath/language expert and the psychometrist (a person with the ability to obtain knowledge about an object or person connected with it through contact with the object) were in the middle of science fiction book debate. They both sent me glances, asking me if I wanted to weigh in on one side or the other of the friendly argument. I shook my head no. I preferred to remain a neutral observer at this point in time. Emily's mother is a high profile ambassador and a powerful telepath. A sharp, intelligent woman that Emily resembles; Emily will win this current argument. Ambassador Prentiss does not see the obvious similarities between her and her kin. She had been deeply disappointed that her daughter was a _mere_ empath. To this day, she was convinced that Emily's ease with languages was a form of telepathy. I agree with her assessment but, unlike Ambassador Prentiss, I accept the limits of my friend's mutation.

JJ, otherwise known as Jennifer Jareau, was walking around the office with _that_ step, the one that indicated that the FBI unit was about to get a new case concerning a suspected out-of-control mutant. While JJ's mutant talent was incredibly hard to quantify and identify, it was useful in her job. She could identify emergencies and proper priorities with merely a glance at the file. My analysis indicated that it was a matter of recognizing the odds. Her card playing abilities nearly rivaled my own. JJ knows what will win, even if she can't put numbers to them.

She was talking to Penelope Garcia. Garcia's official mutation title was technopath. She could make computers do whatever she desired. She would find whatever information JJ needed for our up coming meeting. Garcia was cheerful and up-beat and up-lifting in such a way that I considered _that_ to be her most important mutation.

David Rossi was standing in the doorway to his office. As a touch telepath with heightened hearing and schooled profiler, Rossi was whom the upper management pictured as the stereotypical Mutant Behavioral Analysis Unit Agent. He was old school FBI, retired and just now returning to active duty, and at first had a hard time with the team and the varied team powers. Now, he just watched Prentiss and Morgan with an amused air about him. He was second-in-command.

Not that the FBI Director wanted a mutant in charge of the MBAU. I believed that they all heaved a sigh of relief when Jason Gideon –a touch telepath _and_ a pre-cog- deserted (_Spencer, he left, do not imbue more emotion than facts to your word choice_ my mother's voice chides me) the MBAU. Before Jason and Aaron Hotchner had created the team, pairs of telepaths and non-mutant agents were sent all over the US. The non-mutant was always the agent-in-charge.

Jason Gideon changed that. He became an agent in charge. Jason recruited me. I sometimes wonder what information his precognitive abilities gave him for him to search me out. I often wonder if Jason deserted us (_left, Spencer, I taught you to be specific)_ due to some pre-conceived knowledge. The future is littered with infinite possibilities and is often disturbing. As a result, pre-cogs have a higher rate of depression and suicide than any other mutant category.

Aaron Hotchner was on the phone. I can see him through his office window. He is talking to office management; his shoulders look too tense for him to be conversing with his son. The FBI hierarchy was not pleased to discover that their non-mutant agent-in-charge was actually a strong telekinetic. We had all suspected that he had some mutation –his mental shields are impenetrable, according to Gideon- but we had all assumed that was the extent of his abilities. Once again I hear my mother's voice remind me _you know better than to assume, Spencer, question everything_.

My phone rang. "Dr Reid, FBI," I answered.

"Spencer," the low rumble of one of my favorite professors rolled over the line.

"Dr. McCoy," I addressed him. "I wasn't expecting a phone call so soon. Did Dr. Xavier agree to our request?"

"How many times have I asked you to call me 'Hank'?" the mutant asked with a sigh, but then he answered my question. "Professor X has several reservations about supplying Agent Hotchner with a nanny."

"Jake's just a child who has lost his mother," I defend Hotch's choice of not sending his only son away to Xavier's boarding school. "He needs to see his father as often as possible and vice versa. They will both grieve and then heal quicker as a unit."

"The boy is a burgeoning telekinetic whose powers are directly linked to his emotions. He needs training and supervision."

"No one understands that more than his father who also experiences it," I argued. This is nothing that McCoy wouldn't have considered already, so why was he rehashing the data? "By requesting a mutant caretaker, he is stressing the fact that Jake's changes are normal and not to be feared or hidden."

"Which contradicts Agent Hotchner's previous actions. He chose to hide his mutation from the world."

"I phoned Hotch's old SWAT team members. Each and every last one of them scolded me and the team for letting knowledge of his abilities leak. He was the entry man the entire time he led a SWAT team and out of the hundreds of entries, only once was one of his team hurt. Once. That record should have raised red flags, someone should have asked. No one did and he didn't volunteer. Hotch was a lawyer first, and you know that the first advice your lawyer gives you is to _not_ offer additional information. Then he joined the FBI as soon as the legislation was in place to give mutants legal equal standing." The legislation wasn't perfect but it treated mutants as if there were good mutants and bad mutants and the bad ones needed caught. That was the job of the MBAU.

"I told Charles that you would have an answer to everything."

"Then why ask?"

"I need to know those answers."

"You are stalling, Dr. McCoy."

"I am."

"I'm here to see Dr. Reid?" A new voice cut through the hum of the office. I and everyone else looked up. The kid –he was eighteen if I remembered his medical file correctly, and I did- was obviously a mutant. His face was a little canine, his hair was actually more fur ruff. I knew that pointed, triangular ears were hidden under the cocky, bowler hat. I knew this because one of my PhDs was on X-Genome Expression and he was one of my many case studies. I would have four or possibly five PhDs now, but having to keep current in the anatomy and physiology of known mutants kept me plenty busy.

Morgan stepped forward to escort the young mutant to my desk. I knew he would. Like the rest of the MBAU field team, he has no physical deformities, but both of his older sisters do. Morgan is always protectively hovering in Garcia's background. The car crash that killed her parents amputated her arm. When the doctors replaced it with a bionic one, her body fused to it. No one harassed Garcia about the exposed mechanics of her left hand with Derrik Morgan in the house. The visiting mutant was safe from all persecution in Morgan's care.

"Your messenger arrived safely, Dr. McCoy," I told my friend on the phone.

"Oh good. Winston is interested in law enforcement so I sent him to you."

I braced the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I accepted the stack of personnel files from Winston. "Thanks. Hey Derrik? Winston is interested in law enforcement. Could you give him a tour?"

"Sure." Morgan clapped Winston on the shoulder, "Let's go visit my Baby Girl."

I flipped through the personnel files McCoy had sent as applicants to the Hotchner nanny job. I absorbed the information faster than most assumed possible. It was quite the selection, but then it was still hard for some mutants to find jobs. Their levels of unemployment were always three times higher than the regular population. A well-paying nanny job under the protection of the FBI would seem like a Godsend to most. The lot of mutants in the United States was improving but there was still a long way to go. "Thank you, Dr, McCoy. I'll let you know as soon as Hotch makes his choice."

"Keep in touch," my mentor chided me. "And not only when it relates to your continuing education."

We hung up. I took a deep breath and considered my lot in life.

I'm Doctor Spencer Reid, three PhDs (X-Genome Expression, Organic Chemistry, and Abnormal Psychology).

I am the only non-mutant on the team, though with my obvious intelligence and reading comprehension, few believe it. I am a certified, non-mutant genius. Every year, I have had at least one college professor insist on me taking a DNA test. Every time, the DNA results are negative. Until Gideon recruited for the MBAU, I hadn't meshed with any group; mutants didn't consider me one of their kind and non-mutants consider me a _freak_ whether or not I possess the 'x-genome.'

Hotch waves to me from the stairs and I stand to follow him to the conference room. I bring the nanny applications for his perusal, glad that I was able to make his life after Haley's murder a tiny bit more bearable. I fit in here among the misfits and mutants that are trying to bring down the dangerous and out of control. We are trying to make a difference in the public's perceptions of mutants by taking the dangerous ones off the street.

The MBAU is my home.

I belong.

~cm~x-men~cm~x-men~


End file.
